The [C]arnival is over. LOL. I could be wrong on this, but it was
my understanding that Prince MbS took a huge position in Carnival.
There was talk he was going to turn the cruise ships into tankers
(obviously that was a Mideast joke -- that would have been
near-impossible -- the only similarity between cruise ships and oil
tankers is that they both tend to float when at sea.
More from the article:
Carnival’s recovery will be much slower in 2021 due to the fact the cruise line plans to return to normal operations in phases. Additionally, it will take several months for Carnival to return all its ships to service as the virus deters previous demand.
On Friday, industry group Cruise Lines International Association said it would further suspend voyages from U.S. ports until Sept. 15, meaning the world’s biggest cruise lines will now be going at least six months without American customers.
Last month, Carnival had teased a return to the seas as soon as Aug. 1. But in the past several weeks, many parts of the U.S. have seen an uptick in Covid-19 cases, including Florida, home to the world’s largest cruise port. Carnival Cruise Line, Carnival’s namesake brand, recently said its North American operations will remain paused through September 30, 2020.
S&P slashed the company’s long-term rating by three levels to BB-, from BBB-, saying the cruise line’s credit metrics are likely “to remain very weak through at least 2021” as it begins to slowly resume its operations. The cut from S&P hands the company a second high-yield credit rating, meaning its debt will leave investment-grade credit indexes.
Moody’s Investors Service cut the company to junk in May. In a statement Tuesday, it downgraded Carnival’s unsecured credit ratings by one notch to Ba2, the second-highest junk rank. It also rated Carnival’s planned term loan Baa3, the lowest investment-grade rating. S&P graded the new loan BB+, or one step lower.
"We" wanted 'herd immunity' until we didn't. We realized we didn't want herd immunity when it was finally pointed out what it meant in terms of numbers. Having said that, I'm really, really "heartened" by the numbers coming out of Sweden. If the trends hold, this suggests this is one of the least pathogenic, least infectious pathogenic viruses ever "created" by a lab. But it was a good start.
Disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic errors. In a long note like this, done quickly, and in the dark, there will be content and typographical errors. If this is important to you, go to the link (see below).
Due to nature of reporting, it's not worth bothering to check corona virus statistics until mid-week or later. The numbers are bad enough but they are really, really bad on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
All this talk about surge of cases in Florida and Texas?
Delaware -- #1. Then CA, FL, NJ, NY, PA, AZ, GA, IL, and then finally at #10 -- Texas.
Ranked by "new cases":
Texas surges: up 5,370 cases yesterday; #2 after California
remember: they found flaw in Texas reporting last week, I believe it was
Texas stats:
total cases / total tests: 7%
tests per capita (per million): Texas ranks #42 -- holy mackerel -- this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better in terms of number of cases;
deaths per capita (per million): #42 in state rankings
total deaths per capita (per million): 78 or 0.0078/100 or 0.008%
states with higher number of deaths per million:
South Dakota: 94
North Dakota: 102
California: 143
Minnesota: 253
Illinois: 529
New York: 1,610 (high rate now blamed on the GOP -- Governor Cuomo)
Cases per hundred (or percent, in other words):
NY: 2.1%
TX: 0.43%
Herd immunity, percentage of population before we have herd immunity: 80%.
Later, 1:53 p.m. CDT: Bubba keeps digging that hole deeper. Now this headline -- "Damage control: Bubba Wallace abandons noose narrative after embarrassing CNN interview.
Hours after an embarrassing CNN interview in which he clung to the noose theory (at the link), NASCAR's Bubba Wallace backpeddled with a Wednesday tweet - in which he appears to acknowledge that a garage pull in his bay at Talladega Supserspeedway wasn't a noose.
In other words, after going 'full Smollett,' Bubba likely hired a crisis
management firm which advised him to dispense with the noose talk and
issue a statement he should have made the second after the FBI concluded
there was no foul play.
In less than one news cycle, he came full circle -- he was played; NASCAR was played. Why in the world did he ever agree to go on CNN? It will be interesting to see if he's driving for NASCAR next year. Talk about thin-skinned.
Original Post
First things first: never have I laughed so hard. I've talked about this before --- how headline writers, business reporters, etc., try to explain the entire stock market on one factoid so it fits a headline or can be made into a story for click bait. The market has been on a tear; the NASDAQ has hit consecutive all-time highs; TSLA and AAPL are going crazy; and so, today futures suggest the market will "fall."
The reason: corona virus cases are rising.
Again, there is a huge difference between the number of actual cases; the number of individual folks actually testing positive for Covid-19; and the number of cases being reported by county health departments; etc.
Bubba Wallace and the noose: it turns out he has a thinner skin than he realized. He's doubling down on his angst:
it turns out -- and he admits it -- he never saw the "noose"
his quote: "It wasn't directed at me, but it was a noose."
the "noose" was in the garage since last year
the garage is not "his" garage; the garages are assigned to racers at the time of the race
the president of NASCAR was the one who told Bubba about the "noose"
someone told the NASCAR president -- was Bubba played?
the entire body of NASCAR racers were played
enough of this
I'm hoping the racers let Bubba win the next race so he will feel better about all this
NASCAR needs to award "participation" trophies to those drivers who finish, and "partial participation" trophies to those who start but do not finish
Washington State: got caught with its hands in the "cookie jar." Falsely reporting deaths attributed to corona virus. Remember: if the death certificate has the word corona virus on it, Medicare pays an additional $13,000 for the diagnosis. Washington State says it will quit lying reporting false data regarding deaths attributed to corona virus. Sure.
Tesla: Model Y update over at SeekingAlpha. The [C]arnival is over. LOL. I could be wrong on this, but it was my understanding that Prince MbS took a huge position in Carnival. There was talk he was going to turn the cruise ships into tankers (obviously that was a Mideast joke -- that would have been near-impossible -- the only similarity between cruise ships and oil tankers is that they both tend to float when at sea.
Wow: the Dow drops almost 400 points, AAPL drops a bit and IMUX is up almost 1%. Awesome. Trading near $15.
Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here. Headline: Carnival becomes latest fallen angel while Covid halts cruises. Link here.
Taxes: "April 15" deadline approaching.
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Back to the Bakken
Active rigs:
$39.53
6/24/2020
06/24/2019
06/24/2018
06/24/2017
06/24/2016
Active Rigs
11
62
65
58
30
Two wells coming off the confidential list today -- Wednesday, June 24, 2020: 58 for the month; 203 for the quarter, 430 for the year:
37053, drl/drl, CLR, Angus Federal 14-9HSL1, Elm Tree,
26417, drl/drl, Bruin, Wm Polar 157-101-25A-36-4B, -- look how old this permit is; Otter,
The folks who transport bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to faraway
markets depend on light hydrocarbons collectively known as diluent to
help make highly viscous bitumen flowable enough to be run through
pipelines or loaded into rail tank cars. The catch is — or was, we
should say — that Western Canada wasn’t producing nearly enough
condensate and other diluent to keep pace with fast-rising demand, so a
few years ago, two pipelines from Alberta to the U.S. Midwest were
repurposed to allow diluent to be piped north. More recently, though,
Western Canadian production of diluent has been soaring and new pipeline
capacity has been built within Alberta to deliver it to the oil sands.
That has the potential to reduce the need for imports from the U.S. and
may soon lead to at least one of the import pipes being repurposed yet
again. Today, we continue our series on diluent with a review of the
pipeline systems that collect locally produced light hydrocarbons that
are eventually employed in the oil sands.
The production of bitumen, the very heavy oil that comes from
Alberta’s oil sands, has undergone tremendous expansion in the past
decade. While bitumen has become the workhorse of Canada’s oil supply
growth, it poses a big challenge: bitumen’s extreme viscosity means that
it needs help to allow it to flow in pipelines or be transported by
rail. This is typically accomplished by blending diluent with bitumen to
form a flowable mix called “dilbit” for transport by pipeline or, less
frequently, “railbit” for loading into rail cars.
Simon Watkins: the real reason Russia joined OPEC+ -- over at oilprice. The few "things" I've read by Simon Watkins suggests he may be a straight shooter. Don't know. But "good enough" to start getting "star" attraction on the blog. Big concern: where he regularly posts, but there are not many outlets that have that kind of readership.
June 25, 2020: looks like the move is on to AOC the Tesla move to Texas. Link here. My hunch: if Austin doesn't want them, Plano, Dallas, Grapevine, Roanoke, will welcome Tesla with open arms. Huge Tesla dealer in Southlake. Lots of support here for Tesla. And Lamborghini for that matter, also.
Tesla is looking to build a 4 million to 5 million square-foot manufacturing plant in the Austin area, and it would like to build on land within the Del Valle Independent School District with more than $68 million in tax incentives, an application with the Texas Comptroller’s office says.
Tesla wants to put an electric vehicle manufacturing facility — a Gigafactory — at the intersection of State Highway 130 and Harold Green Road on about 2,100 acres.
The property is currently home to a concrete batch plant owned and operated by Martin Marietta.
The proposed incentive agreement between the car maker and Del Valle ISD lets Tesla save money on its property tax bill paid to the school district by capping the property value for 10 years.
The plant would create an estimated 5,000 jobs, according to Tesla’s Section 313 tax limitation application with the school district. According to the application, wages for 25 positions would be around $74,000 per year.
He said many manufacturers tend to look in areas outside dense cities because land is more affordable in those areas, but they still need easy access to highways.
If approved by the school board, construction on the facility could start in the third quarter of this year.
Tesla said it has to come to an agreement or else it will build somewhere else. Tesla paid Del Valle ISD $150,000 on May 21 to file the application.
Personally, I'm getting tired of that meme, "but they still need easy access to highways."
Oh, give me a break. Building highways is the least of their problems in undeveloped areas. All one needs to do is look at the number of miles of new road built in the Bakken over the years.
But there you have it.
Hopefully no one on Del Valle ISD's governing board AOC's the project.
The amount spent per pupil for public elementary and secondary education
(prekindergarten through 12th grade) for all 50 states and the District
of Columbia increased by 3.7% to $12,201 per pupil during the 2017
fiscal year, compared to $11,763 per pupil in 2016.
Texas average, per pupil: $9,375.
North Dakota, per pupil: $13,760.
New York, per pupil: $23,091
Beginning in the 2020 - 2021 school year, the Del Val ISD will have its own police department.
